The Steem Fantasy Bundesliga - General Preview

The Bundesliga Steem League has been created and can now be joined. What you first need to do is go to https://fantasy.bundesliga.com and register an account, then you go to the "My Leagues" tab and scroll down til you find this:

There you can search for "Steem Bundesliga" and join the team, it is public but only Steemians with a reputation above 35 and who write their Team Name in the comment section of these posts up to Gameweek 2 will be eligible for rewards at the end of the season.

Remember to create your team, you have 2 days and 10 hours left to do so!

This Preview has been written by @theaustrianguy! Scroll midway through the post for the german version!

General

The upcoming season of the Bundesliga, the highest football league of Germany, will start without Hamburg amongst the teams for the first time ever. Other than that, many things seem to be as usual. Bayern Munich, the club from Bavaria’s capital Munich will be the huge favorite for winning all national titles and all the other clubs will try to chase them. Will any club be able to stop the record champion who won the league in the last six seasons? Or will the title go to Munich pretty soon again, making mainly the lower parts of the table interesting to look at. In a few weeks, those questions will start to get answered until next spring. What you don’t have to wait for that long, is our preview of the upcoming German Bundesliga season, which will give you some interesting information for all the eightteen clubs who are going to compete for the title of the best German soccer team. Enjoy!

Augsburg

When looking at the last placements, Augsburg always seems to end up in the second third off the table. Staying in the Bundesliga will for sure be the main goal of the FC Augsburg – however, a little bit more than last year seems possible for the Bavarians, a high one-digit placement seems realistic, a starting place for international tournaments would need an overperformance of the players in my opinion. If you think about it, there is really not too much to say about this rather unspectacular club. Keeper Marwin Hitz left the club, while three German players, Andre Hahn, Julian Schieber and Felix Götze (yes, his famous brother is Mario) joined the squad of head coach Manuel Baum. But the core of the team remains pretty much the same, which of course could be an advantage in the upcoming season. I would not be surprised to see the club rank in the solid midfield this season, maybe keeping a little bit more distance to the declassification zone than last year – Any other scenario would be a rather big surprise in my opinion.

Bayer Leverkusen

The squad of the pharma company Bayer is one of the clubs trying to push the glorious FC Bayern Munich from the throne of German soccer. With Bernd Leno leaving to Arsenal London and Stefan Kießling ending his active career, two famous players will not wear the shirt of Leverkusen anymore. With Paulinho, a 17-year old talent directly from Brazil, a promising offensive player for the future could be signed besides other promising players like for example Mitchell Weiser and Aleksandar Dragovic. With only the goal difference separating the team of Leverkusen from the Champions League starting places in the last season, the goal of the club of course only can be to reach those this year – a season without a place for an international tournament would for sure be seen as a failure. The squad available to coach Heiko Herrlich, who will be in Leverkusen for his second season, definitely has the quality to reach those goals, therefore I expect place 4 or 5 for Bayer Leverkusen.

Bayern Munich

When you are Bayern Munich, there of course only can be one aim when looking at the German Bundesliga – winning the title. Even though there haven’t been any real spectacular new players signed yet, the Bayern will of course have the best squad in the upcoming season. Only Arturo Vidal (to Barcelona) has left the core team of the last season, with Serge Gnabry and Leon Goretzka two promising players joined the team of Neo-Coach Nico Kovac. The young coach will have to prove that he can handle all the star players signed by Bayern – however first impressions like the German Supercup win against Frankfurt, indicate, that he is capable of even handling big egos like the one of goal-getter Robert Lewandowski. So, like all the years before, everything other than a national double, meaning the winning of both the league and the cup, would be a surprise for both the Bayern themselves and probably almost all soccer fans out there. Of course, they will also be the big favorite in the season opening game against Hoffenheim, taking place at Friday, the 24th of August in the Allianz Arena Munich. Looking at the Champions League, the Bayern seem to be a little bit unspectacular compared to the big Spanish and English clubs, but maybe that is exactly what they need to be successful there as well.

Borussia Dortmund

One of the clubs chasing after the favorite Bayern in the past years is Borussia Dortmund – a club that has been in close rivalry with the Munich club for about ten years now. In the last days, a spectacular transfer has been made with the signing of Axel Witsel, a defensive midfielder playing for the national team of Belgium. While Witsel will definitely raise the amount of quality available in Dortmund, the loss of defender Sokratis (to Arsenal) and striker Michy Batshuayi (to Chelsea) will have to be dealt with. Borussia Dortmund definitely has the potential and quality to play a big role in the game of the top five clubs again, the Champions league places should be there goal for the season. One of the top contenders for those (besides the Bayern of course) is the team of RB Leipzig, which Dortmund will face in their personal season opening game on Sunday, the 26th of August. This closing game of the first round will probably determine pretty early who will be able to stay on Bayern’s tracks for a longer time and who will have to delete possible title options pretty soon. So, the first task is definitely one of the harder ones until the winter break. We will see if Dortmund will be ready for that in a few weeks. One thing is certain – Dortmund will want to rank higher in the end than they did last year with their fourth place in the table of the German Bundesliga.

Borussia Moenchengladbach

If you want to describe the Bundesliga’s second Borussia with one word, you probably would have to use the word „solid“. Borussia Moenchengladbach is the typical team that sticks around in the lower areas of the first half of the table. If they performe great, an international starting place is possible, if they don’t, they end up at around rank 8. Even though Moenchengladbach’s lost their central defender Jannik Vestergaard to the FC Southampton, the transfer period looks promising, as all the money from Vestergaard went directly in the Borussia’s new record transfer - Alassane Plea, scoring 16 goals in last year’s Ligue 1 comes from Nizza to Germany and will definitely push Moenchenglabdach’s offensive qualities. Additionaly, a few promising young talents like striker Keanan Bennets from Tottenham or fullback Andreas Poulsen from the Dansih club FC Midtjylland make the transfer period look good for the Borussia Moenchengladbach. Personally I think that they will be able to top their performance of last year and that they will reach the international starting places in the final table.